


Boy and Co.

by marysutherland



Category: B-Berry Pleydell books - Dornford Yates
Genre: Edwardian Period, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-05 22:14:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16819504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marysutherland/pseuds/marysutherland
Summary: Boy Pleydell and Jonathan (Jonah) Mansel are cousins, but theirs is a very close-knit family...





	1. In which Boy climbs a tree and Jonah makes a friend

**Author's Note:**

> This is set before and during "The Brother of Daphne", the first of the B-Berry books (available as a free e-book at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/748). It is canon compliant, except where the canon itself is contradictory.

The Pleydells are an ancient family; if we cannot say for sure that our forefathers arrived with Norman William, yet in the fifteenth century there were men of our house among the great wine merchants of London. These City-men, wearying of their trade in canary and sack, came at length to love the Saxon villages and plant their own roots there. The Pleydells of White Ladies in Hampshire may have found no place in the history books, but it was men of such a breed who assembled with Good Queen Bess at Tilbury to face the Spanish menace. And even if we cannot trace our roots back before the days of Prince Hal, my cousin Berry certainly has the nose and morals of one descended from the less reputable Roman emperors.

We are an ancient family, and also a close-knit one. When my father inherited his portion in White Ladies, he thought it shame to force his co-heirs to sell even an acre of land. Instead, he and Bertram Pleydell shared the estate, although my father, since he was a MP, frequented London much, while his elder brother preferred the life of a simple country squire. My sister and I divided our earliest years between London and Shrewsbury, my father's constituency. Yet, as he always told us, White Ladies was the true home of the Pleydells and always would be. Indeed I have been told that I spent my first months there in Hampshire, since my mother sought repose after my birth somewhere closer at hand to Westminster than the borders of Wales.

The first I remember of White Ladies, however, was also the first time I met Berry. I can have been three at most, still in my knickerbockers, when I ascended the steep stairs to the nursery with my big sister Daphne.

"Why look," said their nursemaid as we entered the cosy room, "Here's your old friend Daphne and her brother. What's your name, my little man?"

"Boy," I told her proudly and the boy beside her laughed.

"Now, master Bertie, behave," the nurse-maid said reprovingly and the boy replied haughtily:

"It's Bertram, Nursey." He seemed a giant to me, already in long trousers, a tall, fair, high-coloured boy with the look of one who enjoyed his food.

"His name's Bois," my sister told him. "Be nice to him, Berry, he's the only brother I've got." She was not yet five, but wise for her years and the smile that she gave Bertram – Berry – would have melted any male's heart.

"Very well, Boy," he said. "Come with me and I'll let you play with my old toy cars. Just be sure you don't break anything."

*** 

I cannot remember whether it was during that visit that Berry ate too much cake at tea and was horribly sick afterwards. Perhaps it was the next year, when I was four and tried to kiss Madrigal, another cousin of mine, under the nursery table. She bit me on the nose. It was the first rejection I had by a member of the fairer sex and one of the more painful ones. My early memories of White Ladies largely blur together now, but one still stands proud and distinct in my mind. The brilliant heat of July and the first time I met the Mansels.

My father was in London, for the House was still sitting, but our mother wanted country air for our lungs. Daphne and I were therefore to spend three glorious weeks in Hampshire with our cousins and without our governess, before we went with our parents to the South of France. When we arrived at White Ladies, I spent a few minutes with my host and hostess and must needs go with them to the nursery to admire their new plaything. This was my baby cousin Jill Mansel, with the blonde curls already coming on her pretty head and huge grey eyes.

But I was seven and three-quarters and wary of girl cousins, after Madrigal. When Berry promised to show me a badger sett in the woods I left Daphne playing with Jill and followed him. The sett was indeed a fine construction, but the day was so still that even in the wood the heat soon grew oppressive.

“I need some lemonade,” Berry announced. “Cook’s made some specially and if we don’t get back soon Daphne and Jonah will hog it all.”

“Who’s Jonah?” I asked.

“Jonathan Mansel, Jill’s brother. Wasn’t he around when you arrived?”

I shook my head and Berry went on. “He’s always wandering off on his own, but he takes good care to be back in time for tea, so he can scoff the lot. We need to get back before he does.”

Berry himself was not underfed, but I knew better than to arouse his wrath by saying so. Besides, I had just spotted a tree that begged to be climbed: a most ancient beech whose study limbs seemed ripe for my ascending.

“Are you coming?” Berry demanded. 

“In a moment.”

Berry shook his head in exasperation. “Well I’m off. Stick to this path and it’ll bring you straight to the back of the house.”

He stumped off and soon the cathedral of nature that is an English wood was mine alone. With eagerness I rapidly ascended my ancient quarry and was soon ten feet off the ground. A few slightly more perilous movements and I was still higher, lording it over the universe, or so it seemed to me. Yet my triumph was short-lived. The desire for lemonade was beginning to awaken in me too, but as I looked down at the ground far below I felt suddenly dizzy. How had I climbed up and how could I now descend? My nerve had snapped and the descent seemed impossible.

I yelled for help then, first from Berry – long since departed, of course – and then for anyone. Hot and thirsty and dizzy, I yelled till my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth, then I slumped back onto the perch I had made for myself.

I took off my belt and tied it round one sturdy branch and one wrist. I was no longer in danger of falling, no matter how giddy I became. But until my absence was noticed...an hour, two hours or more perhaps, here I must remain. _The boy stood on the burning deck, whence all but he had fled_. I could sit down, but then my belt pulled cruelly at my wrist. Yet if I stood, I found my eyes inevitably drawn downwards, towards the temptingly soft green sward so far below me. Perhaps if I jumped, I might not break my neck...

I did not dare. Instead, I sat and bewailed my fortune for many a weary minute. The there came a rustling in the undergrowth. It could not have been the wind, for it was a still afternoon. A badger perhaps, returning to the sett. Would it see me and depart in fear again? Despite my dizziness, I looked down, scanning the ground around the beech.

What emerged was not a badger, however, but a boy of about my age. He was tall, fair-haired and extraordinarily grubby, and as I shouted – or rather croaked – he looked up. A smile lit up his pleasant face.

“Hello up there,” he yelled. “That’s a good lookout spot.”

“I’m stuck!” I wailed, and in a moment he was alert, searching out the great beech’s secrets. Then he was climbing up, as easily as a man might climb a ladder. He swung himself onto the branch beside me.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll have you down in no time at all.”

“I can’t...” I said, and I fear I began to weep, in my childish panic.

“If you got up here, you can get down again,” he said, untying my belt, and there was something in his voice that stilled my fears. “Only you must do what I say, because I’m better at climbing than you are. I’ll go first and tell you where to put your feet.”

He scrambled down the tree again, and then announced.”First of all, you must stand up. Put your right hand on the branch you tied yourself to and then bring your left foot up.”

***

It took only a few minutes to descend, but to my enfeebled mind it seemed nearer an hour. Yet I did not lose heart, for my fair-haired friend was below me, now encouraging, now calming. When I got to the ground, my legs shook so much that I was near to sinking down to my knees, but he held me under my arms and in a moment my weakness was gone.

“And now,” he said firmly. “What wretch left you alone in these woods? You’re well brought-up and I’m sure you wouldn’t have trespassed if someone else hadn’t led you astray. This land belongs to a Justice of the Peace, and he doesn’t like strangers roaming around here uninvited.”

“I _was_ invited,” I replied indignantly and my rescuer clasped his hand to head.

“I should have known,” he said. “You look like a Pleydell, even though you’re dark.”

“I have my mother’s hair,” I said, for the Pleydells are a fair-headed breed as a rule.

“You must be Boy,” he said, and stuck out a grubby hand, which I shook gratefully. “So was it that fat swab Berry that abandoned you here? I bet he’s gone back to skulk indoors again with my sister.”

“You’re Jonathan!” I said in sudden realisation. “Jonathan Mansel.”

The boy shook his head.

“Jonah Mansel,” he replied. “They call me Jonah so I’m not mistaken for my father.”

***

Jonah led me back to the house, telling me about the trout he’d almost caught down in the brook and insisting that we should both go there tomorrow and have another try.

“Berry can’t keep quiet for long enough for them to come out, but I’m sure you could,” he said and I felt the warmth of his smile on me.

But Jonah’s smile abruptly faded as we entered the house, to find a tall fair-headed man picking through the post left on the hall table. He looked up as we approached and hastily slid a couple of letters into his pocket. His resemblance to Jonah was striking. This must be my Uncle Jonathan, I realised, even before he addressed Jonah languidly.

“Your mother’s been looking for you, Jonah. Fool of a woman was worried you were getting into mischief.”

“No, sir,” Jonah replied promptly. “Boy and I have been exploring in the woods.”

“We found a badger sett,” I added, grateful that Jonah hadn’t mentioned my mishap.

Jonah’s father was clearly uninterested in nature.

“I told Daffy you’d turn up like a bad penny,” he said. “Now cut along to the nursery, you two, and don’t bother me.”

I stood there for a moment, looking at him. He was a handsome man, but there was something in his face I found troubling. A puffiness in the cheeks, a gaze that lacked his son’s directness...

“Come on, Boy,” Jonah said firmly, pulling at my sleeve, and I followed him as he went silently and gravely towards the nursery stairs. At the foot of the stairs, on an impulse, I turned, to see Mansel senior tearing open an envelope, before crumpling the letter inside into a ball, his face working.

I was too young, of course, to recognise the signs of dissipation for what they were. Jonathan Mansell was a man blessed with good looks, a fine lineage and wealth. Yet there was a fatal weakness within that even I, as a boy of seven, could already sense.

***

In the nursery we found Jonah’s mother with little Jill. I remember Daphne Mansel now only as a soft cloud of perfume and silk, smiling in relief at the return of her son. Of far more interest to me were Jonah and his sister.

They were a sweet sight together. Jill cried out in delight when she saw her big brother and he lifted her up tenderly, for even though she was not yet a year old, she was desperate to be up and moving. Jonah held her so that her little feet might touch the floor and she shuffled them merrily, if in wobbly fashion. Her grey eyes beaming, she was already afire to dance. I found myself wishing for a moment that I had a little sister as sweet as her. Or a brother as true as Jonah. As he gazed down protectively at his sister, I felt a strange tightness in my chest. 

I find it almost impossible to believe now, but Jonah was in only his seventh summer when I met him; though he was tall as I, he was more than a year younger. Yet the child was already the father of the man. In that day I first saw Jonah Mansel as he would become: intelligent, devoted to his family and a man whom I, like others, would follow anywhere.


	2. In which the Pleydells look after their own and Jonah visits "The Wet Flag"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jonah's life is about to get a lot more complicated.

That holiday was the start of the true Pleydell fellowship at White Ladies, the first time that all five of we cousins were together. Of course, Berry, at sixteen, lorded it over the rest of us, but fortified by Jonah, Daphne and I were now less easy for him to browbeat. And Berry’s lofty demeanour fell away when it was a matter of entertaining Jill. I still remember him, school top hat askew, repeatedly pretending to slip on a banana skin. That was when Jonah and I were not being wolves, raising the infant Jill in the jungle, with Berry as a dangerous, if excessively talkative, Bengal tiger. Even when Berry went off to Magdalen, there was little change. He was still always back with us for the holidays, although we had to prevent him discussing the more lurid of the legal cases he was studying within earshot of Jill and Daphne.

In my memory, it was always halcyon weather at White Ladies, whether the long lazy days of the summer holidays, the crisp white winters with the pristine snow blanketing the fields or the burgeoning promise of spring. The house was an old lady, but in Bertram Pleydell, she had her perfect consort: he tended her with a care that made even her imperfections seem like virtues. And beside him, his rod and his staff, was my aunt Harriet, a great lady, who yet had the common touch. I saw her myself bandage up the hand and dry the tears of a young scullery maid who had burnt herself on the copper. The Pleydells had grown old together in the service of White Ladies and its estate, and so they cherished and supported both Berry and the rest of us, who would take up the torch after them and maintain this little patch of Hampshire in its full glory.

Yet our life was not always to remain such cakes and ale. The new century brought unexpected disasters. First my father was struck down. His longstanding interest in South Africa led to him being a popular speaker during the war. He appeared tirelessly at patriotic rallies; too tirelessly, indeed. During a speaking tour of Herefordshire in the winter of ‘01, he contracted a cold which turned into a bout of bronchitis. Although he recovered, his doctors warned him that his lungs had been permanently damaged. They recommended a healthier climate than either Shrewsbury or London could provide. My father reluctantly gave up his seat, sold his constituency house and shuttered his London one; then he and my mother moved to Switzerland. Since I was already in prep school, and was down for Harrow, I remained in England, dividing my holidays between White Ladies and Montreux.

Two years came the second blow to our family, when my aunt Daphne was out hunting with the Surrey Union Hunt. It was a frosty day; her mare slipped as she was taking a ditch and my aunt broke her neck in the fall.

Jill was six and it was obvious that she should henceforth be brought up at White Ladies, rather than lead a motherless existence at Hale Park with her father. For Jonah, almost twelve, the matter was less clear-cut. It was only thanks to my Aunt Harriet’s persistence that he too exchanged Surrey for Hampshire.

The reason for my aunt’s determination became clear shortly afterwards. I was in my second term at Harrow when I received a family visit: my uncle Bertram was not unexpected, but he brought with him not my aunt, but Berry, whom I had believed ensconced at Oxford, preparing for his Finals. (I gathered from a few muttered remarks about a Bolshevist pig that he had been asked to remove himself from the vicinity of Magdalen; I learnt later that he had in fact been sent down permanently).

We repaired to a teashop, where Berry and I both began to attack the cakes with some alacrity. Yet my uncle only picked at his seed cake and I knew that some matter was preoccupying him. Sure enough, after a few polite enquiries about my study and my rather limited sporting successes, he announced:

“We have a family matter we need to discuss with you. I’ve already written to your father, Boy, but I thought you needed to be aware of the business as well.”

“What is it?” I asked, finishing off my third slice of cake.

“It’s a rather delicate matter concerning Jonathan Mansel.”

“Then shouldn’t Jonah be here as well?” I enquired. My uncle shook his head. He made as if to speak, but he could not seem to form the words.

Berry took up the discussion, with an unfamiliar gravity.

“My father’s spoken briefly to Jonah already, but we have some rather painful matters about his father to discuss, and we thought we needed to agree among ourselves first.”

“What matters?” I asked, feeling very confused.

“Mansel’s ruined!” my uncle burst out. “He’s been living beyond his means for years and now his creditors have lost their patience. Hale Park will go, but that won’t cover half his debts, and everything else is long gone. Mansel will be up in court faced with a bankruptcy petition within the month. Or at least he should be.”

“Will he go to prison?” I asked, with a hazy memory of _Little Dorrit_.

“He’s gone to France, not the Marshalsea,” Berry replied. “Resigned his commission and left about ten days ago; I suspect he’s not coming back. Hoping to keep one jump ahead of his creditors, I suppose.”

“But what will he live on?”

“That’s the devil of it,” Berry replied, and for once his father did not complain about his language. “We suspect he’s taken Aunt Daphne’s money.”

“But wasn’t it his anyhow?” I asked.

“It shouldn’t have been,” my uncle Bertram said. “My father had his doubts about Mansel, so he had almost all Daffy’s money tied up in trust for her. Unfortunately, he thought me unsuitable to be a trustee.” His ruddy face flushed a little further and he came to a halt.

“Dancing bear,” Berry muttered obscurely, and my uncle glared at him before continuing his tale of woe:

“The active trustee was old Gervase Forsyth, the family solicitor. Very reliable man, but-”

“-but more trusting than he should have been,” Berry interjected. “His eyesight was starting to fail, so he relied heavily on his clerks and typists in preparing and checking documents. One of the typists, a woman called Jade, betrayed that trust. She forged documents, and had Forsyth sign them under false pretences. These documents transferred much of Daphne Mansel’s money out of the trust fund and into another account, one that Mansel had access to. We believe that Mansel induced her to carry out this fraud.”

“They’d probably have taken the lot if Daffy hadn’t died,” Uncle Bertram said brokenly. “How Mansel could...why he did it...it’s hard to believe...” It was clear that the weight of his three score years lay heavy on his shoulders that day.

“Is there any way we can get the money back?” I asked naively and Berry shrugged.

“Not from Mansel, of course,” he said. “The money will be long gone on drink and...other things. And if we sued Forsyth senior for negligence, my uncle’s part in the scheme would come out in court. We’re obviously reluctant to make spectacles of ourselves in that way and drag the name of Pleydell and Mansel through the mud. We’d all come out reeking of the sewer and no amount of money can easily remove that stench.”

I could not take it in. “So Jill and Jonah have no money and no home...” I began.

“Harriet and I think of Jill as our own daughter,” my uncle replied immediately. “She will always have a home at White Ladies for as long as she needs it. As for Jonah...the thing is...”

He ground to a halt and I looked at Berry expectantly.

“As for Jonah,” my cousin replied. “He will, of course, also remain at White Ladies. The only matter for consideration is his school. He’s down for Harrow but we were expecting his mother’s money to pay for his fees. If they’re to come from the estate, we’ll need to retrench for five years or so.”

“And as you as well as Berry are an heir to White Ladies, your father and I thought you ought to know of the decision,” my uncle said. “Hiding these things away can lead to bad blood later.”

“So it’s down to us whether Jonah comes to Harrow?” I asked naively and my uncle nodded.

“Then of course he must,” I announced. “He’s just the right sort of boy. Clever and good at games and...” I halted, finding it hard to put my admiration for my cousin into words, and then another thought occurred to me. “Besides, where else would he go? You can’t have a Pleydell going to a board school!”

My uncle Bertram’s round face exploded into a broad grin. “Well said, young Boy! We owe it to our family to have Jonah on the Hill; I’m glad we’re all agreed on that.”

***

To my disappointment, Jonah was not placed in Druries, my house at Harrow; there were insufficient places available that year. My disappointment at him instead going to The Park was soon shared by my fellow Drurieans, since Jonah was a notable sportsman. I became used to complaints about how my “blasted cousin Mansel” had once again foiled our House XI’s game plans. It was not simply that Jonah was nimble and had a surprising strength in his tall, spare frame. What marked him out in matches was his coolness, his ability to outthink his opponents even under the greatest pressure. He was soon a fixture in his house’s footer team, and was already being spoken of as a future captain.

Yet Jonah soon had matters to deal with far more taxing than trying to bosh an opponent cleanly. A week before the end of the summer term, he came to find me in my usual hidey-hole down by Park Lake, where I was sunning myself after prep.

“I need to talk to you, Boy,” he said. I looked round to check that no-one else could hear the terrible breach of etiquette that was a Shell addressing me by my Christian name. Fortunately, we were indeed alone.

“What is it, Jonah?” I asked.

Jonah sat down cross-legged beside me. “I won’t be coming to White Ladies for the hols. Or only for a few days.”

“Why ever not?” I enquired, sitting up and turning to him. He did not meet my gaze, but stared unhappily at the lake

“I’m to go to France to stay with my father. Uncle Bertram’s agreed it.”

“Do you want to?”

Jonah shook his head. “That’s not the point; my uncle told me that. My father wants me to go and...well, he’s my father. I have to do what he says or he’ll kick up a stink.”

“He’s a swine,” I said, and then realised that reminding Jonah of that could give him no comfort. I switched hastily to more practical matters. “Will Berry or Uncle Bertram go with you?”

“Berry’ll take me to the boat at Folkestone and my father will meet me at Boulogne. He wrote from Paris, but I’m not sure whether we’ll be staying there or not.” Jonah looked round at me, forcing a smile. “It’ll improve my French at least.”

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

“If I let you know my address when I get there, could you...could you write and tell me what’s happening at White Ladies?” Jonah’s voice almost cracked, but with an obvious effort he regained his composure and continued. “I mean, I know you’re barely literate, but if you could manage a sentence or two, I’d like to hear what idiocies you’ve committed without me there to guide you.”

“It was you who nearly capsized the skiff at Easter,” I retorted. “But I can write to you, I suppose. I must just remember not to use too many long words, since you won’t have an English dictionary handy. Shall I have Berry write as well?”

“I’ll collapse from shock if he did,” Jonah said. “He’s too lazy to do so, surely?”

I resolved that Berry _would_ write, even if I had to tie his hand to the pen myself. Jonah might not be at White Ladies this summer, but we could make White Ladies come to him with our words.

***

And yet neither Berry nor I wrote to Jonah that summer. Do not accuse me of negligence, sirs; our failure was due to simple incapacity. Jonah had not written to us, or perhaps his letter had gone astray. We sent a telegram to the hotel from which his father had written in June. The reply came that Jonathan Mansel had left for parts unknown; it also included complaints about an unpaid bar bill. Jonah and his father were “somewhere in France”, we presumed, but we knew no more.

“Jonah’ll turn up at some point, Boy,” Berry reassured me. “White Ladies hasn’t seen the last of that ugly fathead.”

“He’s not ugly,” I protested. Jonah took after Jonathan Mansel in looks, with thick fair hair and grey eyes. But there was a strength about his chin now that his father had never possessed.

“I suppose you’re right,” Berry replied. “The lad’s a good-looking fathead. That’s probably why he hasn’t written, you know. Too busy flirting with some dashing mademoiselle to remember us.”

“You think so?” I asked. I should have been reassured by the thought, but I found it oddly disconcerting.

Berry grinned broadly. “With any other fourteen year-old, I’d say yes. Jonah, however, is made of sterner stuff. The jolliest _jeune fille_ of Paris may be giving him the glad eye, but he’ll be as stern as ever.” His mobile face stiffened into a surprisingly recognisable version of Jonah’s gravity. “ ‘No thank you, miss, I would prefer you not to dance like that. Here, let me lend you my jacket; you must be getting chilly in that skimpy dress and I wouldn’t want you to catch a cold in the head.’”

“Jonah’s not a Puritan,” I protested.

“He’s too serious for his age,” Berry replied. “Maybe he doesn’t feel he’s achieved enough to write to us. _My dear Berry, I delayed writing till I had completed my plan to climb the Matterhorn pushing a piano. I had first, of course, to construct a rudimentary rope-bridge and work out how to sling it across an impassable crevasse, armed only with two planks and a spirit-lamp._..”

Despite myself, I broke into a laugh. Jonah’s plans were indeed often both complex and strenuous; he was not good at idling away his time.

“Do you think that _is_ why he’s not written?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Berry said, his voice suddenly serious. “But what I do know is that White Ladies is Jonah’s home and he will always come back here in the end.”

*** 

I was cheered by Berry’s words, but it was less cheering when Jonah finally did reappear, phoning from Southampton a week before the end of the holidays and asking to be collected. When we saw him sitting by the quay with his luggage, he was in a smart new suit, but he was thinner than I remembered and there were shadows under his eyes. He explained quietly that he and his father had been in Paris for some of the time, but also travelled around. It had been a very _educational_ trip, Jonah added, and he’d improved his French accent.

He said little more once back at White Ladies and my uncle and aunt, with the wisdom of age, did not press him to further disclosures. I, however, was younger and more headstrong. I judged that Jonah would not tell the grown-ups about France because he had done things that would shock them. For myself, I wished to hear shocking tales about Paris. So it was that I invaded Jonah’s bedroom the day after he returned and insisted that I would not leave before he told me everything about his trip.

He rose from the armchair where he’d been flicking through a copy of the _Pall Mall_ magazine, and for a moment I thought he was going to throw me bodily from the room. Such a move would probably have been successful: despite my eighteen month superiority in age, he was now at least an inch taller and considerably stronger than me. But instead, he gestured to me to sit on the bed and then locked the door.

I waited uncertainly, as he sat back down and then said in a low voice:

“If I do tell you what happened, you must never tell anyone else.”

“Of course not,” I replied.

“I mean it, Boy. If it came out I’ld...I don’t know what I’ld do.”

“You can trust me, you know that.” I said, wondering what could possibly have upset my cousin, normally so self-controlled.

“I haven’t told the others about France because I’m ashamed of it,” Jonah said abruptly. “Ashamed of my father and myself. He fled abroad to escape his creditors, you know that?” I nodded. “He was suspected of embezzlement.” I nodded again. “I hoped maybe he’d reformed, and that was why he wanted to see me. To make a fresh start between us. We went to Rouen first, to see some friends of my father, or so he said. Near the cathedral, there’s a little square, with a cafe called _The Wet Flag_. It looked quite a decent place at first, cleaner and quieter than many I’d seen. There was a woman sitting at one of the tables; my father said he needed to talk business with someone and told me to go over and introduce myself to her. She was rather a nice-looking girl, I thought: early twenties, well-dressed and with very bright eyes.”

_Cherchez la femme_ , I thought. Perhaps Berry had been right.

“What was her name?” I asked.

“Malta.”

“That’s an unusual name.”

“Not her real name, it turned out,” Jonah said. “My father had told her I was coming, so we talked a bit about Harrow. Then she asked if I knew how to play a card game called _vingt-et-un_. I said I’d played pontoon, which I thought was much the same.”

“ ‘But do you know how to read a deck?’ Malta asked, and she pulled out a pack of cards from a little handbag she was carrying. Then she began to show me...how you used marked cards to cheat someone in a game.” Jonah paused, his grey eyes filled with pain, and then he went on, as calmly as he could, “Malta was a crook, as she made clear to me. _The Wet Flag,_ where my father had brought me, wasn’t simply a cafe. It was more akin to a private club for criminals. And my father had come there _because he was a criminal himself_ and wanted to confer with some of his associates.”

“Did he tell you...?” I asked and came to a stop.

“He said nothing specific to me, but I pieced it together from things that he and Malta let drop over the next week or so. She came with us to Paris, you see, and it was there that I began to understand my father’s role.” Jonah stopped, staring sightlessly at the floor and when he spoke again his voice was harsh.

“Do you know one of the biggest problems for crooks, Boy? Most of them are not only ill-bred thugs, but they look it. All right for small-time villainy, but for the high prizes you need something more: an insider to help your robbery or confidence trick. A man or woman who can gain the trust of the wealthy, who will be invited to parties or to stay for the weekend. As Malta put it: ‘Touch of the old school tie always goes down well’.”

He stopped again, biting his lip, and I knew what he could not bear to say.

“Like your father,” I said. “Who can pretend that he’s still a gentleman, even though he’s a complete blackguard.”

“Even when he’s drunk as a lord, he still sounds like one,” Jonah said savagely. “Though he stayed pretty sober when Malta was around. I think he’s scared of her, or at least whoever’s behind her.”

“Who is that?”

“No idea. I thought it better not to ask too many questions. But it was clear what the goal was once we got back to Paris, and then went on down to the Riviera. My father had been given a list of marks with whom to get acquainted. Rich people to make friends with, potential targets to assess. He wasn’t carrying out the actual crimes, that I know of, but he was passing information to those who would.”

“Making full use of the old school tie,” I murmured.

“And the new one as well.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, sensing we had reached the heart of the matter.

Jonah lifted his head at last, to look me in the eyes. “I wondered at first why he’d invited me over. Then he bought me a new suit when we came to Paris.”

“You looked very smart,” I said.

“I should have guessed it wasn’t generosity on his part, but an investment. He said we were going to some top-notch parties and we were. Parties where he could play the role of a widowed father, absurdly proud of his only son, who was on holiday from Harrow.”

I could almost see it. A handsome gentleman – presuming Jonathan Mansel had kept his looks – with a tragic past. Both proud and wealthy enough to have sent his son to one of the finest schools in England. And this son was now beside him, good-looking, modest, an accomplished sportsman. With Jonah at his side, I could well imagine Mansel senior passing as a fine figure of a man.

“It was sickening,” Jonah said softly. “He talked of my mother as if she’d been the love of his life, claimed he’d sold Hale Park because he couldn’t bear to be in a place that reminded him so much of her. Then there’d be the pathos: me as ‘his strong right hand’. His one desire now was to see myself and Jill well established. I swear half the dowagers at the parties were in love with him by the end of his sob stories, and some girls not much older than me. They see his glitter and don’t realise it’s all just paste.”

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, not knowing what else to say.

“Don’t be,” Jonah almost shouted, and then added more quietly, “I can’t...I can’t bear any more pity. You see _I had that as well_. The poor motherless boy. Matrons wanted to comfort me as well as my father. Kind women offering to help us, to care for us. And I didn’t...I didn’t warn them, Boy.” 

And there, I realised, was the real horror. Not just his father’s share in the matter, but his own. For who would guess that a gem was paste when a true gem stood alongside it? Jonathan Mansel had used his son’s innocence to hide his own guilty character.

Jonah went on jerkily, “You know the lepers in the Middle Ages, Boy? They went round ringing a bell, so you knew to keep away from them, avoid infection. Well my father is a moral leper and yet I rang no bell. He’s unclean and so am I, his accomplice.”

I had never seen him so distraught, not even when his mother had died. I reached out from my perch on the bed to grasp his hands in my own.

“You’re not unclean,” I told him. “Of course, you’re not. You’ve been through hell, but it’s over now. And you’re back safe with us.”

“It’s not over,” Jonah replied bleakly. “I played the ‘strong right hand’ too well. My father wants me back with him again next summer.” He pulled his hands away from me and buried his face in them.

I had to do something, but I knew not what. I did not have the medicine for Jonah’s ills, but how could I speak to those who might have it without revealing his secrets? Only five minutes ago I had sworn myself to secrecy. I bitterly regretted that now. If Jonah would not let me seek help, how could I betray him?

_If Jonah would not let me seek help_. I had somehow to persuade my strong-willed cousin to change his mind on that, but how could I do such a thing? And then I saw the only way possible.

“If you’re going back to France next year,” I told Jonah firmly, “you must tell Berry what happened this time.”

Jonah said nothing.

“It’s vital,” I went on. “Don’t you see, he must know in case something goes wrong. You say your father’s a crook. What if he was arrested while you were out there? Or you were? You’d need someone to deal with the police, bail you out.” Jonah still said nothing, but I could sense his mind working, as I went on, “If a message from the French police came out of the blue to your uncle and aunt, what might it do to them?”

Jonah raised his head and said quietly. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“We must prepare,” I said. “If you tell Berry the situation now, we could make sure that he dealt with any emergency. But if we leave it till matters blow up, I may not be here to put him in the picture and the matter might be made ten times worse by his blundering around innocently.”

“You’re right, Boy,” Jonah said, and at last he looked me again in the eyes. “If I’d been thinking straight I’d have seen that. I need an adult to back me up - not just you - if the fat ever hits the fire. Would you,” - he steadied his voice – “could you please go and find Berry and say I need to talk to him?”

***

“Jonah’s got something to tell you about his father,” I told Berry, when I fetched him. “For the love of God, Berry, don’t make a joke of it. It’s deadly serious.”

“Right you are,” said Berry, and when he came into Jonah’s bedroom, it was not my buffoon of a cousin Berry, but Bertram Pleydell who arrived, alert and intelligent.

“You have something to say concerning Jonathan Mansel?” he asked.

“I have,” Jonah said. He relocked the door behind us and repeated most of what he’d told me; his manner was calmer now and he told his story well.

When Jonah had finished his tale, Berry commented mildly. “Our uncle’s a poisonous wallah, isn’t he, Boy?” I murmured my assent. “It’s not exactly a shock to me, Jonah, though I’m afraid it must be to you.”

Jonah said nothing. I am not sure he trusted himself to do so. I felt, however, that his position must be explained.

“Jonah’s worried he’s tainted by association,” I said. “That by not making a fuss, he was condoning his father’s plans.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Berry exclaimed. “Not even a blue-based baboon would spout such bilge.”

Jonah broke his silence at last and said quietly, “Boy’s right, you know, Berry.”

“Boy?” Berry scoffed. “He wouldn’t know right from wrong if you wrote one on each hand in permanent ink. I know _he’s_ a fat-headed idiot, but I thought that you at least, Jonah, had an ounce of sense in that plug-ugly head of yours. You were alone in a foreign land, a boy of fourteen. If you _had_ stood up like a miniature George Washington, refusing to tell a lie and denounced your father, you’d have been laughed out of court. More than that, you’d have queered your pitch with him, and that’s poor tactics. If we're going to deal with your father, it will take coordinated action.”

Jonah was silent again, but to my relief I could see the light had returned to his eyes.

“And now, Berry went on, “Ignore any desire you may have to spout sentimental bilge about your own unworthiness. This is not a confessional, but a council of war. Let us therefore stick to the practical side of the matter. What can we do to throw a spoke in Mansel’s wheel? I’d very much like to disoblige the blighter, but I must have some material to work with. So, first of all, Jonah, did you witness your father committing any crimes?”

Jonah thought for a few moments, and then shook his head. “There was some loose talk about what he’d done and what he’d hoped to do, but nothing definite.”

“That’s a shame,” Berry pronounced, and I remembered now that he had been reading law before he was sent down from Oxford. “The easiest way to get him out of circulation for a few years would be to have him sent to prison. But without a creditable witness, it would be hard.”

“You can’t expect Jonah to testify against his father-“ I began, but Jonah broke in.

“-if I could, I would. That’s where he belongs, after all. But all I have is suspicions.”

“If you ever see anything damaging, let me know,” Berry said, “and we might be able to make something of it.”

“If he ever sees...” I began, “You mean you’re expecting Jonah to stay with his father again?”

“Our other options are very few,” Berry said soberly. “Legally, Jonah and Jill are under their father’s control alone until they’re of age. The only possible option would be to have them made wards of court. If they were wards, they could not, for example, leave the country without a Chancery judge’s permission. He might well not be prepared to grant that if he thought they would be staying with someone of bad character.”

“Then we should get that done right away,” I said.

“The problem is,” Berry said, “that Mansel might not take that lying down.”

“He wouldn’t,” Jonah said. “He’ld contest the wardship or whatever it’s called. When I told him I didn’t want to come back next year, he said that. I didn’t understand him at the time, but now I do.” He sighed and slumped in his armchair, and added bleakly, “And he’s got money in his pocket for lawyers at the moment, though that may not last.”

“Such a contested case would be a sensation,” Berry said. “Oh, I’m sure we’ld win it, but we’ld have to expose your father to do so, and the court reporters would lap it up. Especially if we needed you to testify, Jonah...”

I hadn’t thought of the reporters. If Jonah were to testify in a French criminal court, it might be a nine-day wonder there, but the English papers were unlikely ever to hear of it. In a family court in England, we’ld be inviting the _News of the World_ and its readers for a front seat view of the family’s dirty laundry being washed.

Jonah was silent for a moment. Then he straightened himself up and said: “You said that legally Jill was under his control, as well as I?”

Berry nodded.

“She has to be protected from him,” Jonah said, his fists clenching, “at all costs. If we do it now, Jill will be too young to understand or remember the details. There’ll be a hell of a scandal, of course, but it’ll blow over eventually. If we leave it and she ends up in his power, there’d be the devil to pay. He’d destroy her, Berry.”

Berry was silent for a moment, and then he spoke very soberly. “ _Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa_. Do you think I know all this about wards in Chancery from my own knowledge, Jonah? When your father first left the country we looked into the matter, but Galbraith Forsyth advised against it. ‘Much ventured for an uncertain gain,’ he told us. ‘You may well find that Mansel has no further interest in his children: he’s certainly shown little enough interest in them before. But if you go to court, the details of the embezzlement will have to be investigated and aired in public, and you’ve done a lot to avoid that.’ We took his advice then, and I think it was good.”

I wonder now, with hindsight, whether Forsyth was also conscious of his own firm’s good name when he gave that advice: it had been his father’s employee, after all who had committed the fraud. But he was right, of course, about the greater blow to the Pleydell name. To be betrayed by one’s underling might be considered merely unfortunate; to have been betrayed by one’s own flesh-and-blood, or at least a relative by marriage, was far more shameful.

“So,” Berry went on. “That was the position twelve months ago. Now we know that Forsyth was at most half-right. Our uncle Jonathan has a use for one of his children. But as regards Jill...Jonah, think carefully. Jill is rising eight. Is there any use that your father could make of a girl-child of her age?”

“He could use her as a weapon against us,” Jonah said immediately.

Berry nodded. “But as an accessory to his own activities? Would she be of use to him in that?”

“No,” Jonah said at length. “At her age she needs a duenna, and that would cramp my father’s style. He’s posing as a gentleman, you see, so he can’t cut too many corners. Besides, Jill’s an innocent. My father can trust me to keep my mouth closed, but if Jill were to learn anything of the _Wet Flag_ or marked decks of cards, who knows who she’ld decided to tell?”

“From what I know of your father, I think your judgement’s right,” Berry said. “Indeed, I can only see a blackguard like him having any use for Jill when she’s sixteen or so.”

Jonah nodded, but said nothing, and I slowly realised with a shudder what Berry meant.

“Old enough to marry, you mean?” I enquired.

“Exactly,” Berry said. “But that’s eight years away. Jonah, do you think before then you can trap your father? Or find some other way to get him out of the picture? It’s a heavy burden, I know, but I think your shoulders are broad enough for that. And applying for a wardship would be a gamble too.”

“As I said, my father wants me back next year,” Jonah said slowly. “I’ll write to him in June asking when he wants me to come. I don’t know for sure if I can send him to prison where he belongs, but in twelve months time I propose to have a damn good try.”


End file.
